If there’s a subject that I could easily get geeky about, it’s the early days of aviation. Octave Chanute was there from the start (at least in the US). A retired engineer, he turned his attention to innovations and experiments in flight from the 1880s, doing the essential but often overlooked work of gathering information about people’s experiments and sharing it amongst the innovators and pioneers who were testing heavier-than-air flying machines at that time. He also gave advice to pretty much anyone who was developing a flying machine.
This was in his retirement. Prior to that, as an engineer, he designed and constructed both the Chicago and Kansas City Stockyards. These giant trading hubs placed both cities (particularly Chicago) at the forefront of commercial routes between the agricultural producers of the MidWest and West and the markets and export routes of the East Coast. You get a link about the Chicago one simply so you can get a sense of the scale of it…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_Chanute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Stock_Yards
Stamp of the Day 